Tracy Fullerton

Tracy Fullerton
Tracy Fullerton in 2013
Born	(1965-06-21) June 21, 1965 Los Angeles, CA, USA
Nationality	American
Education	USC School of Cinematic Arts, Los Angeles, CA
Known for	Game Design
Notable work	The Night Journey (2007) Walden, a game
Awards	Indiecade Trailblazer 2013
Website	www.tracyfullerton.com

Tracy Fullerton (born 1965) is an American game designer, educator and writer. She is Associate Professor and Chair of the USC Interactive Media & Games Division of the USC School of Cinematic Arts and Director of the USC Game Innovation Lab. In December 2008, she was installed as the holder of the Electronic Arts Endowed Chair of Interactive Entertainment at USC. Fullerton is the author of Game Design Workshop, a textbook advocating a playcentric design process. She was also faculty advisor for the award-winning student games Cloud and flOw, and game designer for The Night Journey, a game/art project in production with media artist Bill Viola, and Participation Nation, a game to teach Constitutional history being produced in collaboration with KCET and Activision. Her current project, Walden, a game, is supported by a media arts grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, one of the first video game projects to be awarded such a grant, as well as the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Prior to joining the USC faculty, she was president and founder of the interactive television game developer, Spiderdance, Inc. Spiderdance’s games included NBC’s Weakest Link, MTV’s webRIOT, The WB’s No Boundaries, History Channel’s History IQ, Sony Game Show Network’s Inquizition and TBS’s Cyber Bond. Before starting Spiderdance, Fullerton was a producer and creative director at the New York design firm R/GA Interactive. While there, she created games and interactive products for clients including Sony, Intel, Microsoft, AdAge, Ticketmaster, Compaq, and Warner Bros. among many others. Her projects include Sony’s Multiplayer Jeopardy! and Multiplayer Wheel of Fortune and MSN’s NetWits, an early multiplayer casual game launched in 1996. Additionally, Fullerton was Creative Director at the interactive film studio Interfilm, where she wrote and co-directed the “cinematic game” Ride for Your Life, which starred Adam West and Matthew Lillard. She began her career as a designer at Robert Abel’s company Synapse, where she worked on the interactive documentary Columbus: Encounter, Discovery and Beyond and other early interactive projects.

Fullerton’s work has received numerous industry honors including an Emmy nomination for interactive television, best Family/Board Game from the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences, I.D. Magazine’s Interactive Design Review, Communication Arts Interactive Design Annual, several New Media Invision awards, iMix Best of Show, the Digital Coast Innovation Award, IBC’s Nombre D’Or, Time Magazine’s Best of the Web, IndieCade's Festival of Independent Games, The Hollywood Reporter’s Women in Entertainment Power 100 and Fortune's 10 Powerful Women in Videogames.

Fullerton appeared in Danny Ledonne's documentary Playing Columbine.

She is the cousin of television, novel, comic and game writer Charlotte Fullerton.

Writings

• Fullerton, Tracy. Game Design Workshop: A Playcentric Approach to Creating Innovative Games. AK Peters/CRC Press, 2014. ISBN 978-1-482-21716-2

Awards

• Trailblazer award at IndieCade 2013
• Impact award for Reality Ends Here at IndieCade 2012
• Sublime Experience award for The Night Journey at IndieCade 2008.

External links

• TracyFullerton.com - Fullerton's portfolio
• USC School of Cinematic Arts, Interactive Media Division site
• Game Design Workshop, 3rd Edition site, 3rd Edition site with archived content from old editions.